Welcome To The Hermit's Desk

After sleeping away 80% of yesterday, and another 100% of the previous day, I woke up this morning planning on going right back to bed. And then I realized, with quite a shock...that there was no pain.

No migraine. No nausea. No arm pain. Joint pain, of course, but nominal. (On a scale of 1-10, 2 or 3 is quite manageable.) I stepped outside for my morning cigarette, marveling at the possibilities of a day without pain.

I'd managed a herculean feat yesterday. I went to see a friend. A good friend, who has never missed a hospital visit, who is the most non-judgmental friend I have ever met, and who I've managed to ignore completely throughout this entire mess of pain and misery. It was beyond healing and made the exhaustion upon returning home worth it.

That's thing - the exhaustion is there no matter what. If I stay home, if I go out, if I do nothing more than sleep all day and wake up only to have a cigarette. I often push myself through it for the very basics, but to do something worth it....that's nothing short of a miracle for me.

The exhaustion will come shortly. It always does, even on the days I wake up feeling well. But there's chores I've ignored for a week that I finally feel up to doing. And with luck, there will be enough to spend some time with Jesse, who has been feeling extremely ignored.

He often resents that I spend extra spoons on cleaning, but the truth is, there are chores that are rarely possible, if ever physically possible, for him to do. They must be done. So I do them, the cost of those chores tumbling spoons to the ground in a clanking mess.

We had a ridiculous argument yesterday. But I realized this morning that he is as welcome to his moments of frustration and sorrow just as I am. We have become so used to the similarities of our diseases that sometimes we forget that they are, in fact, different diseases. His sometimes allows him, much more often than I, to push through his chronic fatigue.

Mine does not, and certainly not at this phase of recovery.

I got snarkier than I should have, throwing around sarcastically phrased statements such as "That's why FATIGUE is listed as the SECOND major symptom of lupus. Aaaaand what's that first part to that phrase...hmmm...could it possibly be....CHRONIC? That's like telling me my joint pain will go away. IT WON'T. That's the first symptom of lupus. And the second...whaaat was that phrase again? Did I mention...hmmm...FATIGUE?"

It did neither of us good and I wake up feeling guilty for having been so sarcastic. But as I regularly throw temper tantrums about my disease, it seems fair that he, too, should be allowed to throw the odd tantrum or two about my disease as well.

It's rare that he expresses these feelings, instead being a caretaker and a lover of extremely attentive and sympathetic proportions. I can't expect him to be Superman all of the time.

Now off to scrub out the catboxes, to which dear lord, need it desperately. I think our air is now comprised more of ammonia molecules than actual oxygen.

In such points chronic diseases differ if they have very different causes, that's right...

Well, as long as you two make up with each other again and know how to take it - just as letting frustration out -, this should be fine.This is better than discussions where true characters of persons always come out and people for once don't shut their trap about things that make them sick in general.